Legislature agrees to extend period for civil suits over sex abuse

After months of bitter debate that attracted national attention and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying and advertising fees, the California Senate narrowly passed legislation Friday that will open a one-year window for childhood sexual-abuse victims to file civil suits.

Senate Bill 131 will be forwarded next week to Gov. Jerry Brown to sign after passing out of the Senate with bare minimum number of votes required for passage on a 21-8 vote with 10 senators not voting. Brown has 30 days to sign the bill.

Friday’s vote was trumpeted by victims-rights advocates and the bill’s supporters as a major victory for victims of childhood sexual abuse and a step toward bringing California’s statute of limitations laws more in line with those for other states. The bill’s opponents, like the Roman Catholic Church and USA Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, described the bill as discriminatory against private groups and predicted that Brown’s signing of the legislation would trigger an onslaught of civil cases that would clog the state’s court system.

The legislation introduced by Sen. Jim Beall D-San Jose, would create a one-year retroactive window for some childhood sexual-abuse victims to pursue civil suits. Victims who were over the age of 26 in 2003 but had not yet made the link or what is known as “casual connection” between their childhood abuse and subsequent physical, emotional and psychological problems until later will be able to file civil suits in 2014 against their abusers and the private entities where the abusers worked.

“I’m happy for all the victims that needed this to move forward,” said Beall, who was prompted to introduce the bill after meeting Jancy Thompson, a Bay Area swimmer abused by her coach. “Many of them are in their 30s and 40s and they have been waiting a long time to confront their abusers and the people that helped the abusers and have their day in court.”

Former gymnast Charmaine Carnes is one those who has been waiting to face her alleged abuser. A 2011 Orange County Register investigation revealed that Carnes and nine other former gymnasts at Flairs, a high-profile Pasadena club, were sexually and physically abused from ages as young as 8 through their teens by their coach Doug Boger in the 1970s and 80s.

Although Boger was banned for life from coaching by USA Gymnastics, he continued to train young gymnasts at a Colorado Springs gym near the U.S. Olympic Committee’s headquarters. Boger was fired two days after the Register’s investigation was published.

“I’m positively thrilled that we’ve come this far and that we have practically won the race, and I can’t be more ecstatic for the victims and will benefit from this,” Carnes said. “It sends a message that we’re going to have no tolerance for sexual predators.”

The bill was supported by the California Nurses Association, the California Association of Chiefs of Police, and the district attorneys of San Diego and Santa Clara counties. But the bill also faced intense and well-financed opposition.

A group calling itself the California Council of Non-Profit Organizations and created by California Catholic Conference officials spent $75,195 in the first three months of 2014 alone on lobbying against the bill. USA Swimming hired a high-profile Sacramento lobbying firm to oppose the bill.

Other Catholic groups also fought the bill. Numerous legislators were bombarded by telephone calls from top church officials. The Diocese of Orange described the bill as “poorly written legislation (that) doesn’t protect children and targets church and other private institutions.”

The California State Alliance of YMCAs, the California Association of Private School Organizations, the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, the California Police Activities League and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church also opposed the bill.

In 2002, legislation was enacted that extended the statute of limitations in cases against third parties who were not the perpetrators of the sexual abuse but knew of the abuse or had reason to know of complaints against an employee or agent for unlawful sexual conduct and failed to take reasonable steps to avoid similar unlawful conduct by that employee or agent in the future.

That legislation, known as the Burton Bill, also created a one-year window in which victims could bring a claim against a third party when that claim would have been barred otherwise because the statute of limitations had expired.

Nearly 1,000 cases were filed in California during the one-year window in 2003.

California dioceses paid out $1.2 billion to sexual-abuse victims in civil settlements. About 50 additional cases were filed from 2005 to 20012 by victims who were over the age of 26 in 2003 but did not make a connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult problems until after 2003.

A case filed in 2007 was dismissed on the grounds that the case should have been filed within the one-year window created by the Burton Bill.

The 1st District Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision, ruling that the one-year window only applied to victims who were both over the age of 26 and had made the required causal connection more than three years prior to Jan. 1, 2003. The appeals court also said that victims were not barred as of Jan.1, 2003, and had the option of filing a claim within three years of discovery.

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